Music for sailing and at anchor 13 Jul 19

16º 30.423s 145º 27.447w

Sat Jul 13 2019

There’s just not enough music in our lives. Isabel grew up in central London (Putney) and I reckon listened to whatever she and Lucy and Cecilia thought was the hottest rock back then, and she at least “heard” whatever her folks liked. At university in York she was hanging out with Rob, Russell, Ian, Angus, Dave and Nicola and they all had their musical tastes. Angus was musically inclined; he could sing and play both guitar and piano, and Isabel loves a good sing-along.

Both Isabel and I participated in choral groups in our youth, and we both sang in church, perhaps the most motivational and positive part of our religious experience. She played the flute growing up; I played trombone, piano and dulcimer (none very well) and was a member of a high school clogging team. We competed at the regional and state level, and one of the benefits of the participation was the opportunity to enjoy first hand some real cultural icons such as Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs. I loved to dance, then with a hillbilly wanna be clogging team, later in discos and clubs wherever I lived. Country western, disco or rock, it didn’t matter. Isabel can’t drink enough to get on a dance floor – she’ll fall asleep first. It’s a bit of a bummer how my sister and I both married partners who “ain’t into dancing”.

I built a computer for Isabel when her landscape design consulting business began to grow, and as an excuse to test the thing purchased a DVD of the movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”, a Coen brothers flick and one of the most entertaining of George Clooney’s work. Somehow the music resonated with the girl from Putney, and soon we were hunting for the music by such artists as Allison Kraus and Gillian Welch. When Pandora became available over the cable TV, we could select play lists by artist or genre, and as the tunes boomed from our Bose home entertainment system we could note who the artist was, thus expanding our musical world. That’s how I discovered Regina Specktor, a brilliant Russian-American musician. Pandora educated and enriched our lives.

We had an extensive music CD collection which Isabel burned onto a hard disk before we moved onto the boat. There’s no room for CDs or books on our little boat, so digital media is the answer. As luck would have it, that darn CD crashed, but along the way various other cruisers have shared their digitized music with us. Richard who works for the BBC and has eclectic musical taste burned us a CD years ago. We’ve listened to a lot of that music over the years, but without internet connectivity it is difficult to organize, especially by genre or mood, and it’s a bit frustrating to deal with, so often the stereo remains silent and we just listen to the wind and waves. Those natural sounds are generally soothing but can be almost frightening when conditions get rough.

When we sailed the Pacific from Puerto Vallarta to the Marquesas, our crew member Thad brought his Spotify play list on his phone. His playlists were great and helped us combat boredom during those long days. I was over on SV Halcyon helping investigate an electrical situation yesterday; John and Becca are from Virginia and we share musical tastes especially in bluegrass. John put on one of his Spotify playlists and all of a sudden I was back home in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina.

Turns out you can subscribe to Spotify for something like $10 US per month, then download music. You can “follow” friends and download their playlists or create your own, and Spotify will also look at your musical tastes and create playlists for you. We’ll happily fork out $10 per month for the privilege. The only catch is you have to log in to Spotify every 30 days to keep the downloaded playlists alive – well, that should keep us looking for at least spotty internet access at least once a month, something we need anyway just to keep up with our mail and banking.

Spotify is changing the world of music and using the data they collect from users to enrich subscriber’s lives. That data will also be used for less wonderful purposes such as intelligent marketing of various products and services. Big data is changing the way the world of business works, both for good and for bad. One of Amazon’s ambitions is to market things that you didn’t know you needed yet, and have them to you the same day you become convinced. Perhaps a little creepy, and we are losing (or happily giving up) more and more of our personal privacy as each day passes. It is a bit concerning when emails or pop-ups appear offering up something you might have been discussing with a friend while your nearby phone or computer or Alexa was supposed to be dormant. Best to assume big brother is always listening, and to realize how much you’re being manipulated.

So now we’re on a mission. We’ll continue snorkeling and exploring the South pass here at Fakarava until we’re satisfied we’ve seen enough sharks, grouper preparing to spawn, and other pretty fishies, then when Mr. Wind presents us with a nice day sail we’ll head for the village to reprovision when the supply ship comes in, suck up some bandwidth and get laundry done at Fakarava Yacht Services, and then collect our new crew member Simon from Halcyon. I’m going to spend a day or two on Spotify downloading various playlists, and I’m going to see if our pals at The Motley Fool are recommending them as a long-term stock play, as Spotify fits the profile of a “Rule Breaker”, one of Dave Gardner’s services to which we belong. Spotify is changing the world of music, not only educating us and enriching our lives, but creating opportunities for lesser known artists to get their work out there. Perhaps the artists aren’t making as much money selling CDs or whatnot, but they’re getting the word out and maybe touring and making a better living that way. Soon we’ll invest a little of our hard-earned savings in a Spotify subscription, and perhaps we’ll become tiny little owners of the company as well. For me, I’m betting this music business model continues to grow and becomes the way of the future, just like “software as a service” has become over the last few years.

If anybody actually reads this and might be willing to offer us access to their Spotify playlists, please send us an email! jollydogs@myiridium.net or jollydogsrcc@gmail.com which we’ll be able to access on those rare occasions when we have internet.